September 11 is a very personal day for me.
I was a young executive working in Midtown Manhattan, responsible for employees across the country.
That morning became about finding people.
Finding out who was safe. Learning who was not.
There were old colleagues we lost. There were people who, thank God, missed their flight that morning. There were colleagues who witnessed what happened at Ground Zero in real time and carried those images with them long after that day ended.
My boys started preschool that morning.
My wife, Beth, had just dropped them off and turned around to come home. For a period of time, I could not reach her. Cell service was overwhelmed. I had no idea where she was.
At the office, we gathered an entire floor of teammates.
There was no playbook for what was happening. We divided everyone by geography, paired people together, and sent them home in the direction of whichever bridge, tunnel, or passageway might get them safely out of Manhattan.
No one went alone.
Twenty five years later, there are many things I remember about September 11.
The fear. The uncertainty. The people we lost. The families whose lives changed forever.
But what stays with me most is something else.
The greatness of people.
People helping strangers.
People putting someone else’s safety ahead of their own.
People opening their homes, sharing whatever they had, making room, carrying one another, comforting one another.
For a brief period, the things that normally divide us seemed remarkably small.
We were simply human beings taking care of other human beings.
There was an unconditional love for one another that I will never forget.
It is part of what makes us human.
Twenty five years later, I find myself wanting more of that.
More compassion.
More grace.
More willingness to see the person before the position, the label, the disagreement, or the difference.
More instinct to reach toward one another rather than retreat from one another.
And I want us to find it without needing another tragedy to remind us that it is there.
Today, I remember those we lost.
I remember those who ran toward danger.
I remember the colleagues, friends, families, first responders, and strangers who took care of one another.
And I remember what we are capable of when we choose our shared humanity first.
We should not need our worst days to bring out the best in us.
Never forget.